Category Archives: habitat dioramas

After my presentation at the ASEH annual conference in Madison I was posed an interesting question: how can natural history museums continue to exhibit habitat dioramas as if they were unproblematic displays? The questioner’s implicit assumption—and one that I agree … Continue reading →

Will Knight

I am PhD candidate in Canadian history at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. I am currently writing a dissertation entitled “Modeling Canada’s Aquatic Nature: the Dominion Fisheries Museum and fisheries exhibits 1883-1955.” This project examines the conceptual and material modeling of fish and other marine animals in Ottawa’s fisheries museum. My primary fields of research are museums, fisheries, and natural history in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Publications

“Samuel Wilmot, Fish Culture, and Recreational Fisheries in late 19th century Ontario.” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 30, 1 (2007) 75-90. Download the article in PDF from Erudit here.

Talks | Guest Posts

The Dominion Fisheries Museum in Ottawa: Lost and Found. This is a podcast of a talk I gave at the Ottawa Public Library, part of a four-lecture series entitled “Discovering Ottawa’s Environmental History.” This podcast was recorded by the Ottawa Public Library on February 16, 2011.

This is a blog post I contributed to Wise Monkeys, a Vancouver-based food blog, on the semiotics of tinned fish labels… The Landscapes of Canned Fish